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Get live advice on how to reduce your grocery bill

By Staff, Postmedia

Posted:
03/13/2014 06:02:20 AM EDT

A few years ago, Beth Moncel could barely make ends meet. A self-proclaimed budget queen with a degree in nutritional science, Moncel decided to take action to ease her financial strain, and one of the first areas she tackled was her food budget, crunching the cost of food and recipes down to the last penny.

Using spreadsheets, her initial goal was to eat for less than $6 per day. Through careful calculations, she learned which budgets stretched her food dollar and soon found she was cooking twice as much food for half the cost.

“At work, my delicious home-cooked lunches started to make my coworkers jealous. While they ate soggy submarine sandwiches, I indulged in stir-fried ginger beef and fragrant jasmine rice,” she writes. “The oohs and ahhs that erupted as I heated my homemade lunches let me know that I was onto something.”

Join our live chat with Moncel on Thursday, March 12 at 1 p.m. EST as she discusses her strategies for full bellies and full wallets. She'll share her favorite money-saving recipes and some of her best money-saving secrets, too.

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